17 March, 2010

MILITARY RECORDS ARE UNRELIABLE & NO GENOCIDE VICTIMS VOTED IN 1996 ELECTIONS

Two discredited genocide deniers - namely NebojsaMalic and Andy Wilcoxson - continue to spread lies, half-truths, distortions and misinformation about the 1995 Srebrenica genocide. When it comes to the issue of credibility, they are "non-entities." With regards to genocide deniers, it is important to keep in mind that any information received from the horse's mouth must be first treated with an anti-bacterial mouthwash and then safely disposed down the drain. Today, I received a comment from NebojsaMalic referencing one of Andy Wilcoxson's genocide denial articles. Malic's comment was rejected due to violation of our comment policy, but to dispel his distortions, I'll republish it and respond to it. Here we go:

NebojsaMalic [comment received March 16, 2010 9:45:10 PM] said:

{Citation Start}"Of the 7,661 persons listed as missing after Srebrenica was taken by the Bosnian Serbs in July 1995, some 5,371 are members of the Bosnian Army. Remains of 3,837 have been identified."{Citation End}

The information about 5,371 military cases comes from ABiH (Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina) military records. It was analyzed by EwaTabeau, the Hague Tribunal's demographer and included in the Internal Memo entitled "ABiH Military Records Overlapping with 2005 OTP List of Srebrenica Missing" in Popovicetal case. However, what Malic and Wilcoxson avoided to mention is that on the 2nd page of the same source, Tabeau came to the following conclusion which disproved Malic/Wilcoxson distortion:

{Citation Start}"The next issue I discuss here is the reliability of reporting in the ABiH [Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina] lists (Tuzla region and all other regions). In the assessment of the Demographic Unit, reporting of cases in ABiH lists is not highly reliable. The lists were made for the post-mortem pension purposes, so attention was predominantly paid to the fact whether or not a given person died. Including cases in these lists was motivated financially and in some cases had nothing to do with the actual being of an army member. Death details were of less importance, e.g. cause of dead is poorly reported, for missing persons it is just 'missing', place of death is not reported at all, inconsistencies are seen in the reported date of death when cross-referenced with other sources etc. Moreover, next to the army members, also non-army personnel of the FBiH [Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina] Ministry of Defence, police members, and the staff of the production sector associated with the army were occasionally included in these lists as well. The Demographic Unit never used these lists as a source for compiling a list of victims. In few cases, these lists were used by the Demographic Unit for monitoring possible army and police members on victim lists based on other sources."{Citation End}

In the second paragraph of his comment, NebojsaMalic raised the question of women and children asking us "What kind of 'genocide' leaves the women and chldren alive?":

{Citation Start}"Keep in mind that the women and children abandoned by the 'brave fighters' of the 28th Bosnian Army Division (from the 'demilitarized safe area' no less) at the UN base in Potocari were safely evacuated by Bosnian Serb troops, using trucks and buses hastily requisitioned from Serb civilians. What kind of "genocide" leaves the women and children alive?"{Citation End}

First of all, the Krstic judgement explicitly states that the women and children were not safely evacuated but forcibly expelled from Srebrenica. They were victims of ethnic cleansing. Some Bosnian Muslim women were brutally raped during the Srebrenica genocide. On the other hand, Bosniak men and boys were a specific group which Serb forces targeted for destruction. Krstic appeal confirms 40,000 casualties of the Srebrenica genocide. According to the appellate judgment of RadislavKrstic, Serb forces "targeted for extinction the 40,000 Bosnian Muslims living in Srebrenica." Serbs never demilitarized around Srebrenica despite of being required to so under the 1993 demilitarization agreements.

Second of all, the reason Serb forces did not kill all women and all children is because they sought to avoid the international censure. Here is how the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia ruled on this issue:

{Citation Start} "As the Trial Chamber explained, forcible transfer could be an additional means by which to ensure the physical destruction of the Bosnian Muslim community in Srebrenica. The transfer completed the removal of all Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica, thereby eliminating even the residual possibility that the Muslim community in the area could reconstitute itself. The decision not to kill the women or children may be explained by the Bosnian Serbs’ sensitivity to public opinion. In contrast to the killing of the captured military men, such an action could not easily be kept secret, or disguised as a military operation, and so carried an increased risk of attracting international censure.

In determining that genocide occurred at Srebrenica, the cardinal question is whether the intent to commit genocide existed. While this intent must be supported by the factual matrix, the offence of genocide does not require proof that the perpetrator chose the most efficient method to accomplish his objective of destroying the targeted part. Even where the method selected will not implement the perpetrator’s intent to the fullest, leaving that destruction incomplete, this ineffectiveness alone does not preclude a finding of genocidal intent. The international attention focused on Srebrenica, combined with the presence of the UN troops in the area, prevented those members of the VRS [Bosnian Serb Army] Main Staff who devised the genocidal plan from putting it into action in the most direct and efficient way. Constrained by the circumstances, they adopted the method which would allow them to implement the genocidal design while minimizing the risk of retribution. (Krstic Appeal)" {Citation End}

NebojsaMalic's comment also contained an outdated and discredited lie which was deliberately 'invented' by his mentor MilivojeIvanisevic:

{Citation Start}"There are more problems with the mainstream narrative. Some 3,000 names from the list of the missing are shown as having voted in the 1996 elections.{Citation End}

In fact, not even one Srebrenica genocide victim voted in the 1996 municipal elections as claimed by genocide deniers. Local authorities simply used the list containing the names of all registered pre-war Srebrenica citizens. Every pre-war Srebrenica citizen was included in the voters' list. The same list was used in 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000. This does not mean that "dead people voted." According to Helge Brunborg, the Hague Tribunals' expert, at least 7,475 Bosniaks perished in the Srebrenica genocide. Under cross-examination in Blagojevic case, Brunborg (who speaks English as his Second Language) explained that by 1997, there were no missing people registered to vote:

{Citation Start}"If you would look at Table 1 on page 7 in the 2000 report, you will see that there were 5 -- on the ICRC list and PHR list were 5.712. On the ICRC list only 1.586. That makes 7.298, which is 101 less than the ICRC number that you quoted, 7.399. In addition, we had access to information that the ICRC did not have at that time, I believe, which is the voters' list, 1997 and 1998, which were used to check that missing people were -- that there were no survivors who registered to vote. And we also checked difficult cases where the data were incomplete with the 1991 census.... The only thing is the information from ICRC, that 6 persons were found to be alive. So we subtracted that number."{Citation End}

Furthermore, Brunborg explained:

{Citation Start} "People who are missing and believed to be dead should not be able to vote. So when we had this complete list of people who were registered to vote in 1997 and 1998, we wanted to make a comparison to see if there were, in fact, people believed to be missing who were registered to vote. So we did a very careful comparison, and we found nine names that we believe are unique and that are appearing on both lists of missing persons and the list of voters. So there is an error somewhere. Either these are not really missing persons, they are survivors, or somebody misused their identities because they knew they were dead, so they misused their identities, perhaps to get extra -- additional political influence, to vote twice. Or third, there is a mix-up due to data problems and so on. But the conclusion is that the number was very small. Nine, that is less than -- that is about one-tenth of a per cent. To be on the safe side, we subtracted these names, although it is not certain that these are survivors.... We asked the ICRC whether they knew about people who had survived, who they later learned to be survivors and not dead on the list of missing persons since January 1997. And they told us there were six persons out of 7.000, but they would not reveal their identities to us. So to be on the safe side, we subtracted another six persons from the total number. We could not delete those from the list that was also submitted to the court, because we didn't know their identities. In this way we ended up with 7,475." {Citation End}

Asked "how reliable do you think this number of 7.475 missing persons is it?", Helge Brunborg responded: "We think that the number is very reliable as a minimum estimate... the number could easily be higher because there were records that we excluded to be on the safe side."

As of July 2009, the DNA results of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) support an estimate of 8,100 Srebrenica genocide victims. So far, the identities of 6,186 genocide victims have been revealed by the DNA analysis.

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Srebrenica Genocide is not a matter of anybody's opinion; it's a judicial fact recognized first by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and subsequently by the International Court of Justice.